Operators of large retail operations such as grocery "supermarkets" must devote significant resources to servicing customers in checkout lanes. In most suburban areas, after a customer has selected items for purchase and placed the merchandise in a cart or other container, the customer is required to (i) remove the merchandise from the shopping container, (ii) place the merchandise on a checkout counter, (iii) wait for the cashier to process each of the selected items for identification and pricing information, and enter the information in the checkout register, (iv) pay the cashier for merchandise, and (v) wait for the merchandise to be bagged and returned into the shopping container. This process is cumbersome, time consuming and generally an annoyance to the customer, especially during times of high traffic periods such as pre-holiday shopping periods. It is vital for retailers to make the checkout process as quick and pleasant as possible for the customer, otherwise a store operator risks losing the customer to a competitor who can provide better service to their customers.
Currently, store operators typically provide their facilities with a number of checkout lanes necessary to service customers during high volume periods such as weekends and pre-holiday shopping periods. This, however, requires that the store operator devote significant resources to equipment and space having little to no utilization during most of the store's operating hours.
Although the introduction of bar codes on products, and bar code equipment at checkout lanes has significantly alleviated some of the above problems within the parameters of the above described checkout systems, it has not completely resolved the problem. These systems have improved the throughput of the checkout registers by making the merchandise identification process must faster and less prone to erroneous data entry. However, the systems have changed little otherwise and many of the same problems still persist.